neil-gaiman:

littleowls3:

Besides the Mary Sue, I love it.

I made me smile, but I really don’t love it. I’ve read too many wonderful books to which any or all of these warnings could apply, including “apparently edited by chimpanzees”. I worry that people might fail to write good books because they think these warnings are real rules. There are no real rules. Tell good stories and tell them well and don’t leave the reader feeling cheated at the end.

(Now rereading the Arthur C. Clarke Novel of 2001: a Space Odyssey, which is actually a massive infodump with occasional moments of conversation, and I can’t work out how it could have been anything else. For that matter, Harry Stephen Keeler never wrote a novel that didn’t violate at least 16 of these warnings.*)

*I am not alone in my love for Harry Stephen Keeler. There’s a society, dammit.